How did this take over the internet?
“This video is not safe for work.”
This is Pink Guy.
He’s part of the lore of the Filthy Frank omniverse — more on that later.
Even if you haven’t seen Filthy Frank on YouTube, you’ve probably seen his impact.
He’s reached the Billboard charts as “Pink Guy” with stunningly profane raps
and collaborated with mainstream YouTubers.
If you don’t know those celebrities, you probably remember this.
In 2013, everyone in the world was doing the Harlem Shake.
It became a corporate trend for stuff like...Hot Pockets.
Filthy Frank and Co., they started that.
He — and his fans — even touched this video.
By that, I mean his fans kinda made us do it.
“I just saw a Vox video saying you could comment down below on what you wanted the
video to be.”
“We’re gonna commit to make a video on the top comment from this video.”
“I went on the Filthy Frank subreddit and I directed people to comment, ask to do a
filthy Frank Video.”
“A lot of your content has a reputation for being very politically correct, so I think
people just wanted to see what your take on Filthy Frank would be.”
Frank is very politically incorrect.
“Ladies and gentlemen, racists, pedophiles, black people, I don’t even care.”
He indulges in racial, ethnic, and cultural stereotypes for just about every single country.
And he is unflinchingly disgusting.
But Filthy Frank is not just rants.
His series has an elaborate mythology that’s crucial to understanding his success.
And his career says something about the future of all shock comedy
in an age when YouTubers don’t just flout taboos.
They ignore them completely.
“Filthy Frank and the characters of it are just that, they’re characters.
Joji is absolutely nothing like that.
He’s taking a lot of what teenage guys think and their edgy humor and putting it into a
character, putting it into an entire omniverse of beings that exemplify that.”
Filthy Frank fans like Abby dissect this YouTuber in parts.
At the top is George Miller, the guy who makes all this stuff.
“So, hello!”
The persona closest to him is Joji, a music project so generically hipster that it should
be sold bundled with a flannel and knit cap.
Music outlets have supported him in this new identity, portraying him as a quirky totally
chill bro, not somebody who profited off cruel humor.
But most fans know him as Pink Guy, Filthy Frank, and related sub-characters.
Pink Guy released those chart topping albums, with songs like…
“Anal Beads” “I love hentai.”
“Dora the explora, Dora the explora, bitch look good for a four year old.”
Pink Guy has also been in skits alongside Frank, where he’s often mute or incomprehensible,
or he appears in glorified prank videos where he spasms around and gets oddly muted reactions.
Filthy Frank is equally scattered.
Occasionally he semi-ironically pranks people in the real world,
sometimes he’s in skits, and other times he just has offensive rants
about commenters and stuff like Pokemon Go.
Just to be explicit about what Frank is willing to do, he has:
Dined on vomit Cooked dead rats
And even dressed like Guy Fieri.
The only overriding rule?
“Everybody gets shit.”
“Frank shits on everything..”
“First of all, is it OK if I swear?”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Because he swears, and I’m quoting him.
He says, ‘we support prejudiced equality, everyone gets shit.’”
You can make critical gestures at describing Frank’s work.
David Lynch plus Weird Al plus head injuries.
“I feel like every generation has that Ren & Stimpy or 3 Stooges.
You know it’s really kind of gross and bad humor, but for some reason you can’t stop
watching it.”
“It’s like going back to the 2 Girls One Cup days - you didn’t like it, but you liked
seeing your friends watch it.”
All these different sides to the profane nonsense of George Miller can seem like unfiltered
garbage.
Yet some of his millions of YouTube fans are happy to talk about it.
Well, most fans.
“Can you guys like, actually lower my voice a bit so it doesn’t sound like I’m the
person I am?”
They argue it's more than just outrageous comedy.
It's art.
It all started with Pink Guy.
There was a competition with a lycra-covered being named Red Dick and powerful Prometheus.
On the verge of defeat, Pink Guy summons the dark lord Chin-Chin.
“Oh Chin-Chin!”
Frank fans believe an elaborate mythology — a lore — is key to understanding the
comedy of Frank, and they’ll parse all things Filthy Frank to get it right.
You’ll find hours of compiled lore videos on YouTube, a wikia, as well as a book.
None of the lore is completely consistent but, to fans, that’s either reconcilable
or not an issue.
“Is there a cosmology to what is known as the Filthy Frank omniverse?
The book basically just threw me off so I’m kind of starting again.”
“I do cosplays of both male and female characters, primarily from anime or cartoons.
Filthy Frank is pretty popular within a lot of anime communities.”
“I actually had to rewatch that specific video, a couple scenes a couple of times to
figure out what shoes he was wearing, how his hair looked — it’s a little floofy
— what kind of wig would I need.”
“The lore kinda happened, it just developed randomly and then the community got involved
and Frank went, “Ok.”
Lore layers artifice over the offense.
It paints Frank as an artist, not a bomb thrower.
It’s the same dynamic that lets ventriloquist Jeff Dunham blame his puppets.
“Do you know how racist that is?”
“That’s why it’s so fucking funny.”
And for Miller, it also serves as a way out.
When Fox airs pedophile jokes on Family Guy, or Danny DeVito gets oiled up on It’s Always
Sunny in Philadelphia, there’s an implicit promise: the disgust
is OK, because a big company is in on the joke.
Or when Sacha Baron Cohen plays to stereotypes as Borat and Bruno, he earns fawning articles
about his inventive costumes.
We don’t get outraged when Bono is in on the joke.
But independent YouTubers can't buy legitimacy.
The lore lends Miller credibility.
“The offensive humor of Filthy Frank has a purpose.
I think it’s like a showcase of the semi-negative sides of humanity that actually are very intertwined
with the positive sides of humanity.”
That credit doesn't roll over to other YouTube stars.
“I’ve been in the PewDiePie scene since he had 200,000 subscribers.”
“I believe the things PewDiePie says are actually PewDiePie saying it.
PewDiePie is just a nickname for Felix.
Filthy Frank is an alter-ego.
I see Joji as an artist, he created a character, he’s writing a character, he’s trying
to show the human embodiment of what you should not be.”
But there’s a bit of a contradiction for Miller himself.
He benefits from the success and fan base the character brought him, but he doesn’t
want to be tinged by its toxic appeal.
In one video, he asked the fanbase to see beyond his characters to understand him.
He revealed his own life.
He shared details about his worries, his then college life, and his medical problems.
It was a plea to be seen as an artist, not an asshole.
“People not knowing that I existed and that it was just these guys really gave me a lot
of stress.
Because I’m a normal person, just like the rest of you guys.”
That video?
It was reuploaded by a fan.
George Miller deleted it.
“It’s just a Spiderman mask I found at Toys ‘R Us.
I don’t want people to find out I watch this crazy, insane stuff and I’m talking
about it for a Vox video.”